Transport 2000 Canada Hot Line

10 October 2008

This is the Transport 2000 Canada Hotline, issue number 988, recorded on 10 October 2008.

In this issue...

1 - Calendar

Oct. 19: TransportAction is in the mail. TransportAction is the official publication of Transport 2000 Canada. It is a bi-monthly, 8-page newsletter which reaches about one thousand Transport 2000 members and all MPs.

Oct 14: Federal election. Transport 2000 urges members to check candidates' promises about transport issues.

Nov. 1: Transport 2000 Canada: Board meeting: Vancouver, B.C.

2 - Transit promises: Details please: Jean Léveillé

"What bothers (Transport 2000's Jean) Léveillé is that while most of the promises are big on promised cash, they seem short on explanations of just how that money will be spent. And the issue of actually expanding public transit systems seems to be off the table," the Montreal Gazette reported.

"At bottom, what we need in Montreal and in other cities are the means to improve public transit," Léveillé said. "In Montreal there is a flagrant lack of buses ... even the contract to get new métro cars still isn't settled.

"But what I find aberrant in all this is that we're not asking for new métro lines or bus routes, ... we just want to renew the fleet," the Gazette reported on Oct. 7.

3 - Sudbury Airport: 3-minute emergency response regulation: A Transport 2000 accomplishment

"The Transportation Safety Board of Canada is assessing an incident involving a Bearskin Airlines aircraft that skidded off the runway Tuesday at Greater Sudbury Airport. A spokesman for the airline said a flock of 20 or more starlings flew into the plane's engines within a second of touchdown on the runway about 1:30 pm," the Sudbury Star reported on Oct 2.

The Star reported the airport's emergency responders met the 3-minute response rule. The rule was developed in part as a result of Transport 2000's work in the aftermath of the Air Canada Fredericton incident of Dec. 17, 1997.

4 - Transport 2000 Québec de passage à Gatineau

Charles Thériault,ecrit dans Le Droit le 8 octobre : Les utilisateurs du transport en commun ont des droits que les sociétés de transport doivent respecter.

Cette notion du droit des usagers n'est pas très ancienne et le groupe Transport 2000 Québec, de passage à Gatineau hier dans le cadre d'une tournée provinciale pour la faire connaître, a recueilli les commentaires des utilisateurs du transport en commun à ce sujet.

Selon Harry Gow, membre fondateur de Transport 2000 Québec, le respect des droits des usagers du transport en commun varie beaucoup d'un pays à l'autre et même selon les régions. De plus, ces droits ne sont pas absolus. "Obtenir un service d'autobus toutes les cinq minutes comme beaucoup de gens le souhaiteraient, n'est pas un droit. Mais le système de plaintes et de suivi des plaintes du public est essentiel", Le Droit a rapporté.

5 - Should Ottawa's municipal transit plan be discussed by federal election voters?

"When federal politicians give money to municipalities, they are rewarded with compliments from councils. But when they ask questions about transit plans, they are said to be interfering, or worse, ignorant," Transport 2000's Harry Gow wrote in the Oct. 6 Ottawa Citizen.

"Could it be that in questioning some of the least popular aspects of the plans by Ottawa city staff and consultants, candidates in the federal election are showing that they have been listening to voters?

"... Federal elected officials will want to see more value for money than what the transit scheme-of-the day can now offer. I believe it is not they who are ignorant about transit in Ottawa," the Citizen letter said.

6 - Road collision victims: National Day of Remembrance: Nov. 19

In 2005 the United Nations declared the rate of road deaths constitutes a global epidemic. This year Canadians will, for the first time, stop for a minute of silence to honour the memories of friends and family killed on the road.

Transport Canada reports: "Since 1998, nearly 30,000 people have died in motor vehicle crashes in Canada. Over 200,000 have died over the past 50 years, more than were killed in both world wars combined. Drinking and driving, speeding, not wearing a seat belt and failing to obey traffic signs account for the majority of our fatalities.

http://www.tc.gc.ca/hookedonroadsafety/awareness.htm

http://www.tc.gc.ca/roadsafety/vision/menu.htm

http://www.ccmta.ca/english/events/calendar.cfm

http://www.carsp.ca/

7 - Night flights: YVR, Trudeau

An all-candidates meeting in Ladner liked what they heard from the four federal election contestants when it came to airport noise over Tsawwassen. The candidates were all in agreement that NAV Canada, the private agency that operates Canada's civil air navigation, should be more accountable to Transport Canada, as well as be subject to an appeals process when major changes to flight paths are contemplated, the Delta Optimist reported on Oct. 3.

On Oct. 8 the Montréal Gazette reported: "Night flights still keeping us awake: residents decry delay in new airport plan by Transport Canada.

"Three months after Aéroports de Montréal announced that night flights over various parts of the city would be cancelled because they failed to meet pre-set criteria, jets flying out of Trudeau airport are still waking up residents in St. Laurent, Cartierville, Ahuntsic, Saraguay and Laval. Residents of those communities ... called the delay unacceptable.

The Gazette reported: "Opposition to night flights has grown in recent months, as have calls for night flights to be returned to Mirabel, said Luc Marion, president of Citizens for Quality of Life, a coalition of community groups fighting night flights. Now, he added, a coalition of mayors, including Dorval's Edgar Rouleau and Town of Mont Royal's Vera Danyluk, is forming to fight ADM's stone-walling. "It's our impression they are stalling," Marion said."

8 - Hamilton presses for light rail

"Hamilton Mayor Fred Eisenberger is touting light rail transit over Bus Rapid Transit as a key to the city's economic well-being, despite the ambivalence over modal choice currently held by Metrolinx, the provincial transportation planning agency serving the Toronto metropolitan area," Railway Age reported on Oct. 7.

"'There's a significant economic uptake you don't get with Bus Rapid Transit,' Eisenberger said Monday in addressing the Hamilton Chamber of Commerce. Eisenberger and city council representatives recently toured LRT operations in Calgary, Charlotte, N.C., and Portland, Ore., and were impressed by both economic development and ridership numbers attributed to the systems. The mayor said he's counting on Metrolinx to include at least one Hamilton light rail transit line in its first five-year budget due in November.

Transport 2000 Canada notes: Consultants involved in Ottawa BRT had been hired to study LRT options for Hamilton and had instead recommended ... BRT. We are told they will not be hired again in Hamilton! Winnipeg has however been steered onto the BRT path by consultants, but meanwhile Edmonton and Houston have decided to avoid the extra costs of later converting to LRT and are dumping BRT in favour of going directly with LRT for transit extensions.

9 - Anthony Clegg: Historian and cartographer

Aldhelm Anthony Clegg, described as "a lifelong CN railroader and one of Canada's finest rail historians," passed away Monday at age 88," Railway Age reported on Oct. 3

Born in Toronto, he was educated at St. Laurent High School and at Ottawa Technical (drafting), before being hired by Canadian National. He retired in June 1983, after 42 years of service as a cartographer for CN. Clegg also was a member of the Canadian Railroad Historical Association and Railfare Enterprises, for which he edited manuscripts and authored a number of books on transportation topics.

10 - Seaway workers poised to strike: Port of Hamilton: 700 ships a year

The Hamilton Spectator reports: "About 700 ships a year come into Hamilton harbour. About 550 are from Canada and the United States and arrive in Hamilton via the Welland Canal, which links Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. The remainder are from overseas and use the St. Lawrence Seaway from the Atlantic Ocean to come to Hamilton.

The port authority would take a financial hit from a strike of any duration. It earns revenue from charging tariffs on ships entering the harbour and a tonnage fee for berths," the Spectator reported on Oct. 8.

11 - Ferry service: When costs rise and traffic falls, we don't tear up the bridges and roads

"Shipping to and from the island of Newfoundland - where 95 percent of the province's half million residents live - has become alarmingly expensive. Sky-high fuel prices have triggered one fuel surcharge after another - a cumulative 27.7 per cent since July 2007 - on the ferries that serve as the province's lifeline to the rest of the world," Canadian Press reported on Sept 29.

In this part of the world, ferries have long been regarded as essential infrastructure, extensions of the railroads and, later, highways, that connect Atlantic Canadians to one another and the wider world. Many communities in Newfoundland - and most in Labrador - are so remote that they are not connected to the provincial road network and people rely on local ferries to get in or out.

12 - Minister Cannon pledges support for Wakefield Steam Train

"Four federal election candidates in Pontiac riding -- including Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon -- pledged (October 5th) to help resurrect the Wakefield-Chelsea-Gatineau steam train," the Ottawa Citizen reported on Oct. 6.

"If there's an issue where there's any consensus, it's this one," said Mr. Cannon, pledging that the government would make sure the train can reopen for the 2009 tourist season.

13 - Le gouvernement était prêt à investir : Le train à vapeur

Le Droit a rapporté le Oct 6: "Alors que le ministre Cannon a réaffirmé que son gouvernement était prêt à investir via Développement économique Canada, le candidat des Verts a dit vouloir faire des rails du c.f. HCW un réseau pouvant aussi servir au transport en commun avec un train léger."

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